It's easy to decry blatant propaganda of the sort pushed out by Kremlin-controlled media in Russia and Fox News in the USA. But only a very naive person would imagine that Western news media provides even the slightest hint of the reality. Western news media manufactures endless sensationalism, be it celebrity gossip or context-free fearmongering about conflicts, viruses, and political upheavals. Only sensation is sufficient to grab for a few brief monetizable moments the fickle eyeballs of empty-headed Westerners, and so an endless stream of manufactured sensation is what we get. In its way, this nonsense is just as toxic as any Kremlin propaganda. It gave us Brexit, Trump, etc. and continues to shape the "opinions" of empty-headed people everywhere - usually thereby inflicting huge negative costs on society as a whole.

One of the major factors contributing to the end of Western civilization is the "news" media; it's simply unacceptable to continue to pretend it's an asset when in reality it is an enormous liability. In some ways the Western "news" media is more insidious than the propaganda pumped out by dictator-controlled media organizations, because it doesn't merely tell infantile lies; it distorts what was once reality in order to present to its empty-headed audience a story simple enough for their limited intellects to grasp.